THE SAINT - POETS OF MAHARASHTRA

by

M.D. Atlekar

 

(Source :  The Aryan Path, July 1939)

Contribution by a lover of Ancient Wisdom

Part I

Marathi Literature is rich in what may be called spiritual poetry; it is even believed by some that the old poets, who were rather saints than poets, neglected this world in order to be perfectly happy in the next. One school of thought holds that excepting Ramdas, an eminent saint of shivaji's time who was the spiritual preceptor of the great Maratha hero, none of the old Marathi poets taught anything useful to national progress or to worldly success. In opposition to this stands the verdict of the Late Mahadev Govind Ranade, by common consent the most profound thinker of nineteenth-century India; he held that the success of Shivaji was made possible by the pioneer work of the great saint-poets of Maharashtra from Mukundraj and Dnyaneshwar to Tukaram and Ramadas and that, but for the inspiration these poets supplied and the mentality they created, there would have been no political revolution in the Deccan. Most of the early Maratha poets were men of saintly character who devoted all their life and energies to the service of the poor, the downtrodden and the ignorant. These early saint-poets undoubtedly moved on a spiritual plane, but they were not unmindful of the millions who have to tread the earth, fight their daily battles and earn their daily bread. In fact, it was to succor these that they wrote their works and also preached occasionally. They hated all hypocrisy and they inculcated a love for industrious habits, cleanliness, mental as well as physical, and a heroic spirit that should stand adamant against the most frightening calamities. In fairness to our own intellectual honesty, we must study them properly and find out what they stood for and what they achieved.

One great achievement reveals their democratic spirit and their concern for the common man— their determination to work for the masses and not to serve the interests of one class only. They wrote in Marathi, the speech of the ordinary people, at a time when writing in Marathi was looked down upon, and some of them wrote in such beautiful Marathi that even the finest Sanskrit compositions were surpassed. Dnyaneshwar, the greatest among them all, deliberately stated that the Vedas served only for the higher classes, but that the Bhagwat Geeta was for everyone, and that he wrote in Marathi because he wanted all—including Shudras, women and the ignorant—to know what is in the Geeta and the Vedas. Eknath, three hundred years after Dnayaneshwar, proclaimed the same message. Though his times were not so difficult as the latter', he was persecuted by the so called orthodox of his day. To write for all, to make even all highest knowledge available to all without distinctions of caste or sex, station or occupation—that was the spirit in which the earlier great works in Marathi were composed. Marathi has been a democratic language from its very birth. Mukundraj lived a hundred years earlier than Dnyaneshwar, who flourished in the thirteenth century for, alas, only two wonderful work the Dnyaneshwari and of his still more wonderful book called Amirtanubhav makes us ask how such a brief life could pour forth such experience and such wisdom.  Dnayaneshwara said that he would write in such a style that his words would compete with nectar itself, and those who have read the Dnyaneshwari will bear out the fact that the great poet-philosopher did not overstate his claim, Mukundraj, a hundred year earlier, wrote the Viveksindu, and though it is doubtful if his original language is preserved in the copies that we read today, it is certain that he wrote in a simple style. Dyaneshwar used all the technique of the art of poetry to make his works as charming to read as they were sound in their philosophy of life.

 

Both Mukundraj and Dnyaneshwar followed the Adwait doctrine of the great Sankaracharya, but in raising man to spiritual heights they did not forget that he is made of flesh and bone and that he has to live this life. Mukundraj in describing a true disciple and a true preceptor, condemned hypocrisy in out spoken terms and censured men who in order to make wordly gains pretend that they are spiritually great. But in the Dnyaneshwari, or Bhavarthdipika, as Dnyaneshwari's wonderful work is also called, we get precepts both about how to live in this world and how to secure the greatest eternal bliss. Dnyaneshwar described the varieties of fools and knaves that we meet in this world, through—kind hearted and broad-minded as he was— he looked upon all knaves as fools. What he had written Ramdas amplified four centuries later, in a more popular but much less poetic style. Dnyaneshwar asked men to do everything efficiently and cheerfully. Whaterver you do, do it beautifully was his message—while Ramdas explained the necessity for carrying on one's family life in an upright and determined manner, Dnyaneshwar, in his Amritanubhav or Anubhavamrit, soars to heights of thought that are difficult to understand except for intelligent and persistent students and explains how perfect joy can be attained even in this life. In fact, the Mukti or the Moksha described in his philosophy, which as said is the same doctrine as that of Sankaracharya, is Jeevanmukti or the release in this life from all grief and temptation. 

Just as the saint-poets wrote for the masses, they worked in a number of directions to raise their level of life. The temple at Pandharpur, which even now lakhs of devotees visit every year, became the shrine of a God who was democratic and who could be seen and worshipped by all, irrespective of caste or station or occupation in life. The Dnyaneshwari became the Bible of this new spiritual centre of Maharashtra. These saint-poets were believers in one ultimate Power, but they did not mind the worship of individual gods as means to the attainment of the ultimate truth. They were firm Adwaitwadins but they were not intolerant. True reformers that they were, and workers for the masses, they possessed an abundance of toleration. That is not to be taken as indicating slackness of principle. But they understood that before you could obtain the pure gold of principle, you must dig into the dust of concrete worship and varieties of worship.

The greatest names among these saint-poets of Maharashtra are Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Eknath and Tukaram. The first two belonged to the thirteenth Century, Eknath to the sixteenth, and Tukaram to the seventeenth. But before we refer to them individually, we might note an important characteristic of that glorious age in Marathi literature. We find that among the writers of those times there were people not only of different caste but of different communities as well, and they all sat together and treated each other with a reverence and in a spirit of equality that deserves to be imitated by the present generation. We have among the poets of those days men and women, Brahmins and non-Brahmins, the last group including the so-called untouchables, And there is no doubt about the sincerity with which they wrote and preached. They were strong men and women who had battled with their desires and had conquered them—the greatest victory for any one—and they did not believe in sickly sentimentality. They were very humane, but they never forgave the wicked, whom they would punish with a strong hand. They preached non-violence, but Tukaram said in one of his lines that if a scorpion entered the house of God, one must kill it. They were men and women of great common sense, and they knew and preached that in order to ensure non-violence unless you can reform the violent you must destroy them."The protection of the good and the destruction of the wicked"-- these two planks of sound philosophy have been handed down from the Bhagwat Geeta, and the Marathi saint-poets followed that precept. A man may be good, they taught, but there are bad people who will not allow him to be good, and he must battle with them.

 

So the charge that these great writers inculcated timidity and flight from the world is a libel, arising probably out of ignorance. They did not ask people to give up this life—they clearly stated that the way men dealt with their Sansar makes them fit or unfit for paramarth. Do the duty that lies nearest, they preached, do it well, and then you will be fit to perform higher and ever higher duties. It will thus be seen that they taught a very valuable philosophy of day to day conduct, and though their ultimate goal was to attain spiritual heights, they never believed or preached that that could be done by neglecting one's ordinary duties or by doing them inefficiently or grudgingly. In days when Western ideas of nationalism were unknown in India, this teaching was really national education.

They interpreted freedom as victory over oneself, over one's instincts and desires, and they described complete self-control as complete freedom. Even after half a century of the new psychology this proposition must stand supreme as the test of everything that is good and beautiful. The civilization of man is measured by his progress along the lines laid down by this proposition, and let us remember that the Maratha saint poets never hesitated to lay it down with vigor and with insistence. All this thought current has revealed itself in the later Marathi literature. When we study the Marathi poets carefully, we realize that Dnyaneshwar stands behind them as their inspirer and their standard. The tributes paid to him by them are as affectionate as they are sincere and true.

 

-----------------

Part II

Namdev was a sweet poet ; he himself communed with God and his abhangas are delicious to read. But such was the sturdy thought of that day that when he was examined by someone to test his spiritual worth, the verdict given was that he was not perfect because he was still entangled in the concrete and was not able to grasp the abstract.

Eknath was a family man of some wealth and was voluminous writer. He has written a long book on the eleventh part of the Bhagwat Puran--a part devoted mainly to philosophic discussion. In the course of discussing high themes, Eknath gives sound advice on many matters of everyday interest. He made a name for being kind to the depressed classes and for being absolutely free from feelings of anger. He edited and published the Dnyaneshwari and was evidently a very great and courageous man. His works do not attain to the poetic heights of the Dnyaneswari, but occasionally they remind one of the author of that wonderful book.

Tukaram was a Bania by profession and a peasant by birth, while Namdev was a tailor. Tukaram wrote a Marathi that is all his own. His abhangas are repeated in every Marathi-speaking household. His power of phrase-making was marvelous. He was fearless, as they all were, and like them all, he did not mind giving you a bitter pill if he thought that it would cure you of your malady. Courage was their chief virtue, and they spoke the truth even when the truth was unpalatable. These great authors are venerated wherever Marathi is spoken, and there is no doubt that their works have given a peculiar status to Marathi literature.

The Story of Dnyaneshwar is very eventful. His father Vithalpant, a resident of Paithan, was going about as a pilgrim, when in his wanderings he came to Alandi near Poona, where he met gentlemen who gave him his daughter in marriage. Sometime after his marriage, however, Vithalplant grew tired of this life and wanted to seek spiritual truth. So one day he left his wife to go to Benares. There he called upon a famous Sanyasin and became his disciple, himself entering the fourth ashram. But he concealed from his guru the fact that he had a wife. A few years later the Guru, while on a pilgrimage, happened to visit Alandi, where he met the sorrowing wife of his disciple. When he heard the full story he took compassion on her ; he went back to Benares and ordered his disciple to return to his wife and to carry out the responsibilities that he had undertaken. So Vithalplant again became a Grihastha, a householder, and in course of time he had four children. Nivritti was the name of the eldest boy, Dynaneshwar of the second, Sopan of the third, and the youngest child, a daughter, was called Muktabai. The four children became famous in the history of Maharashtra as the spiritual quartet. All of them died while quite young, but during their short span of life they made a great name for themselves, and in Marathi-speaking households their names are as venerated as those of Rama and Krishna. When Vithalplant wished to perform the thread ceremony of the eldest boy, Nivritti, fresh trouble arose. The pundits of the day objected that the children were the children of a sanyasin who had no business to have any children, and that therefore they had no caste, certainly not the caste of Brahmins, and thus the thread ceremony could not be performed. It appears that at this shock Vitalpant again grew tired of life and left on a pilgrimage from which he never returned. The poor children, abandoned by their parents and scorned by public opinion, had to face life alone, and they faced it bravely and cheerfully. They even discussed matters with the pundits, who were surprised at their knowledge and their fine conduct. The children, now in their early teens, decided to renounce the worldly life and to devote themselves to yoga and to spiritual pursuits and to remove ignorance from people's minds. Nivritti, the eldest boy, became their guru, and they set forth upon their mission. Probably this single-handed struggle against an adverse public opinion and the attempt to establish themselves as normal persons taught the young people many things and they got more experience in a few years than most people acquire in a long life. Dnyaneshwar is credited with having performed many a miracle, but there could not be a greater miracle than his wonderful Dnyaneshwari and his still more wonderful Amritamnubhav. The literary merit of these works is of the highest order and their philosophy and spiritual quality have given solace to millions. Even Muktabai, the youngest of the children, was a great adept in wisdom and in spiritual attainments and has left a few abhangas.

Namdev was a contemporary of Dnyaneshwar who lived a long life. There is controversy as to whether there were other Namdevs who lived in Dnyaneshwar's time, and there appears to be sufficient evidence to uphold the theory that there were. Be that as it may, the thirteenth century Namdev has left some very delicious abangas that describe his intense love for Vitthal, and his is probably the highest kind of spiritual poetry to be met with in any literature. From a man who was practically a dacoit he developed into a great devotee: while perhaps this phenomenon of conversion has given colour and glamour to his poetry, it has blunted the edge of pure Dnyan and caused him to follow a personal and therefore a concrete God in contra- distinction to Dnyaneshwari, who realized the highest spiritual stage where God and devotee become one and undivided.

Eknath was a Brahmin of great reading and knowledge and a man who understood life. His heart was full of the milk of human kindness and he restated the Adwait doctrine once more and preached to the people, teaching them to be wise and fearless. The example of Eknath proves that the Maratha saint-poets were in no way opposed to participation in life or to entering the Samsar. All that they insisted upon was that even Sansar should be carried on in a particular frame of mind, and when that is done, Samsar itself becomes moksha. All that one has to do is to develop that frame of mind by gradual study, by certain spiritual exercises, by yoga, or by bhakti - devotion, which always meant an attitude to every one which proved that one thought of others as one thought of oneself, or, to put it in technical terms, one must see god in everything.

Then we come to Tukaram, who was also born in a well-to-do family but who, when left to his own devices, failed in business. Then a terrible famine came and before his eyes he saw his wife and children die of hunger. He tasted the bitterness of life to the full, and all misery. This was probably responsible for his death in the early forties. His second wife is reported to have been a very irascible woman, but we must remember that she had to support a family while her husband was earning practically nothing. Tukaram devoted all his time to preaching through his abhangas. He had the power to express his ideas in the most potent words that are sometimes like powerful drugs. He could also render high ideas from the Upanishads in the simplest and yet the most telling Marathi. When and where he studied them one cannot imagine, but there is no doubt that his study of the Mahabharat, the Ramayan, the Upanishads and the Vedant philosophy was intensive. He said that he and his like (that is the saint-poets) had to do all this because they had to protect the good and expose and punish the wicked and the malicious. He asked people to take a long view of things and not to be entirely absorbed in the affairs of the moment. He even used slang in warning the people, for adequate expression was his object, and he did not mind using an expressive word even when that word was not favoured by what may be called polite society.

In this connection, it may be mentioned also that neither Dnyaneshwar nor Eknath minced his words. They all spoke the truth and spoke it without fear or favour. The common quality of those spiritual masters was their fearlessness, and they imparted that virtue to the people of their time. What is called the double standard of conduct of modern educated people in this country or elsewhere was condemned by those great masters. "You should fall at the feet of those who act what they preach", proclaimed Tukaram. “The capital of the good is compassion", he said elsewhere. "Be alone, concentrate and purity your mind", was still another piece of advice that he gave. And thus Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Eknath and Tukaram are beacon-lights on the great road from misery to happiness, from mental slavery to complete moksha.

The name of Ramdas may be added to this galaxy. He was a contemporary of Tukaram. As the preceptor of Shivaji, he was concerned with the actual politics of the day, but the stamp on his thought is undoubtedly that of Dnyaneshwar.

Apart from these, there were several writers, less known perhaps but holding the same views, who belonged to the same school and preached the same gospel of "seeing God in everything", truly a gospel of equality and fraternity and of liberty as well, but of liberty based on the sound foundation of self-control. "The extinction of the desires and victory over the senses", was the technique of those teachers. They made Pandharpur the centre of a new practical religion, a religion in which the edge of caste feeling was blunted, a religion which could be adopted by everyman and by every woman without the distinction of community or class a religion which laid down definite doctrine but which possessed the spirit of tolerance. It was undoubtedly a school of bhakti--but it is the glory of the saint-poets of Maharashtra that their bhakti was peculiarly free from the deification of the physical and from the chaos into which several bhakti schools fell on account of confused thinking.

The bhakti school, in several places, degenerated into one kind of sensualism or another, and that was perhaps due to the circumstance that a mistaken puritanism forbade everything to human beings as human beings and allowed everything to gods. This led also to the development of a false conception of God. The saint poets of Maharashtra saved the Marathi speaking population from this double degeneration. They did not object to the use of symbols, but they insisted that symbols were no more than symbols. Sex-madness was never a part of the bhakti that was preached and practised by the Maratha saint-poets. and it should be remembered that they were not afraid of being purists. They taught a sturdy bhakti, and they laid down that bhakti must always manifest itself in the day-to-day conduct of man. The technique of bhakti without right conduct, the outward show of bhakti without readiness to treat everyone just as you would treat yourself, was not accepted by those saint-poets as meritorious. Mad behaviour or even wicked behaviour was never accepted as an attribute of a man who had realised and experienced the highest spiritual state. By giving all the fruits of his own actions to others, he would be free from the bondage of Karma, but that never meant that he should indulge in the wrong action. He must act wisely and be a model to others. Dnyaneshwar had the supreme gift of expressing great principles in unequivocal language, and the others followed his lead.

It is interesting to contemplate that great company of those days, men and women coming together to spread the gospel of right action and right knowledge, and to see how Marathi Literature was enriched not only by the educated and so-called high-class people, but by all classes and types. There were shopkeepers and barbers, shoeblacks and carpenters, even maidservants who contributed to the great movement. Namdev had a maidservant, Janabai, who occupied an eminent place in that great company and who left some sweet abhangas. Maharashtra was roused by these writers ; it was made to see things as they are ; and the awakening, as Ranade says, was indeed but the preparation for the great political work that Shivaji accomplished in the seventeenth century. The saint-poets of maharashtra realised that certain institutions of the Hindus blocked their unity, blocked the solidarity which is the supreme need of every community, and they tried to remedy this by raising the spiritual values to a place above the social values. In modern times we may try other devices, but that does not lessen the importance of the service which those great souls rendered. They left a beautiful and inspiring literature---they have also left excellent examples for us to follow. They hated injustice and inhumanity and they were never selfish. In fact, the complete absence of Ahankar or egoism, the absence even of the feeling that you are free to indulge in Ahankar, was the key to their supreme spiritual loftiness. Their philosophic idealism is their greatest legacy. The Jivanmukta, or the person who is free from all bondage even during his lifetime, has been described by them, and particularly by Dnyaneshwar and Eknath, in a marvellous manner, and remains as an ideal for everyone to aspire to. Eknath in an inspired moment wrote of the death of Krishna that he was not afraid to live and not afraid to die--but that though he was above life and death he did not want to live just for the sake of living, and thus he departed as soon as he had completed his life work. And Dnaneshwar said that his Guru had raised him to such a state of bliss that he was able in his turn to give this joy to others. Let us pause and contemplate that level they had reached and try to understand their teachings.

--------------------